


flesh and bone

by scionblad



Series: the village atop the hill [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Era, Blackwatch Genji Shimada, Blackwatch Jesse McCree, Blackwatch Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Canon-Typical Violence, Loss of Limbs, M/M, Male Friendship, Pre-Relationship, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 17:03:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12775491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scionblad/pseuds/scionblad
Summary: “You could have died,” he said. He ran a thumb along the grooves on the back of his metal hand.“Maybe,” said McCree. “But I didn’t and we both lived. Lucky, huh?”———Genji watches McCree lose an arm on an op.





	flesh and bone

**Author's Note:**

> alt title: mccree flirts with genji by throwing himself in danger and almost dying

They didn’t get the nice MV-261 hovercrafts that Overwatch did for drop missions. Rather, Blackwatch used a smaller, more utilitarian craft with six seats and an open drop off the back. The scientists managing his new body had been apprehensive of a parachute drop, but he didn’t really think much on that. The parts he was concerned about were the long, slow, _boring_ rides to the drop point.

It was a small strike team, composed of himself, Reyes, and a few others. He was sat on the end, next to the door at the back of the craft, with the agent called McCree on his other side. McCree was smoking, his hand holding the cigarette between his thumb and index finger, mouth bunched up in an unsatisfied scowl.

“Let me have some of that,” Genji said.

McCree glanced at him furtively. “Nah,” he said, putting it out with his gloved left hand. “S’not worth it.”

Genji made a face. He hadn’t smoked in what felt like years, now. He missed the relaxing, sharpening feeling that came with a good cigarette.

The other agents were asleep. Reyes was on the other end of the craft, arms crossed, head drooped down with chin to chest. Lately he’d seemed exhausted, but also unseemingly anxious. He spent long hours at the lab room near Genji’s, walking back and forth at late hours of the night, when Genji was lying there under observation and testing. There was a peculiar energy that rolled off him now that Genji couldn’t quite place, but he wasn’t sure if he was willing to look under the shell. The commander deserved respect. Genji would give him that much.

McCree was still looking off to the side, sulking at his apparently piss-poor cigarette, hands drumming on the holster where his gun was slotted. Genji wanted to ask where he’d even gotten it, but it was too loud and McCree seemed occupied in thoughts far away.

There was surely a file on him, Genji thought, but they likely would not let him look at it, let alone near it. All he knew was that McCree was not much older than himself, and that he was a deadly shot.

He wished that he’d paid more attention learning English in school.

“Is there more where that came from?” he asked McCree. McCree only looked at him, and then looked at Reyes.

“Boss wouldn’t like it,” he said.

Too bad. He looked at his watch, with the flashing date and time. It would have taken his mind off of a lot of things. The long plane ride made him jittery and anxious, a dog pacing back and forth in its cage of thoughts, and thinking was something he’d done far too much of lately, stuck on beds and meddled on with practiced doctors’ and engineers’ hands.

Beside him, McCree had taken his gun out of the holster, spinning it around on his right finger, taking things apart and putting it back together. There were six holes in the cylinder. It looked a like a tube of lotus root, but instead of seeds the holes housed bullets.

His first mission with McCree had been in Shanghai. The revolver was what stuck out the most about him to Genji, then, from his strange cape to the chaps to the hat with wide brim that sat low on his brow. Genji knew weapons and guns, and knew that the men of his clan preferred assault rifles or shotguns, and Reyes used two of them, which was most impressive. But a revolver? A revolver was slow to reload, quickly depleted, a liability on the field. Reyes was strange to put such trust and care into this man, with such strange weapon and attire.

But in the warehouses and towers, they sped through, and in McCree’s wake were six dead bodies on the ground, lying, smouldering still, and Genji revised his views.

Six men for six bullets, quicker than Genji could blink. Maybe even faster than he could dash, but he didn’t know, and McCree had never asked him to find out.

He kneaded the palm of his flesh hand with his metal one. This plane ride was really making him too anxious. He didn’t have a gun to mess around with like McCree, and he would rather not take out his shurikens or his sword to mess with, to tamper with the sharpness of the blade.

The smell of McCree’s cigarette smoke lingered still, sitting musty on McCree’s strange cape. Genji leaned his chin on his hand and closed his eyes, trying to breathe in what he could of the smoke.

 

* * *

 

 

They dropped down under cover of night, just outside the town of Hanamura, and entered the town quietly and slowly. A few people drunkenly stumbling home passed them on their way but they paid no mind to the other.

At the corner just around, Reyes stopped them.

“Pairs,” he said, clipped and commanding, and pointed. “Myers, Soriano—draw fire, but don’t get cocky. O'Deorain, you’re with me. We’ll flank the left. McCree and Shimada can take the right, take the objective. Don’t leave anyone behind, and _stick to the plan_.”

Hanamura was oddly quiet as they set out, and they easily scaled the walls of Shimada Castle without meeting reinforcements. Genji narrowed his eyes. The guards? The servants? Where were they? It was unnerving. He had not been here in years but it did not even feel like what he expected. They crept quickly across the long bridge into a big hall in the back of the estate, Genji leading, looking around corners quickly and nodding to McCree when the area was clear. Below, the two other agents Reyes had told to draw fire did their work, and while the ground floor shook with the ring of gunshots, Genji and McCree dashed back towards the dojo, towards the files that were so important.

It was a room off to the side, away from the dojo, in a room Genji had never been allowed to enter in his youth. He stopped for a brief moment, to look in silent awe. McCree studied him curiously before sliding past him to the safe.

“A safe, huh,” he remarked, quirking an eyebrow. “Awfully old-fashioned, isn’t it?”

Genji shrugged. It was never any of his concern.

McCree turned back to the safe, quirking a grin. “Well, doesn’t matter,” he said cheerfully. “I know a thing or two about picking locks.”

His nimble fingers set to work, eyes twitching back and forth, and quick as lightning the safe clicked open. It was mostly empty, save for a small thumb drive, which McCree swiped and handed to Genji, who plugged it into a small device to decrypt and copy its contents. The gunslinger tapped his fingers on his strange pants rhythmically as he watched the device with a sharp gaze from under his wide-brimmed hat.

When it was done, Genji put the drive back in the safe, and they closed the door and left the room swiftly. It all went oddly smoothly, and Genji could feel his heart racing and steam rising through his mechanical limbs, but he didn’t question it. He didn’t really think there was room to question it; he and McCree were already running back down the hallway, racing past the dojo floor, McCree pressing a hand to his ear to tell Reyes they were finished with their part of the mission and that the content of the drive was safely tucked in a pocket in Genji’s military attire.

They regrouped at the courtyard near the gate, and made to move out, when McCree stopped, his eyes flickering back and forth across the yard. Genji felt irritation itch his skin.

“What is it?” hissed Genji. “Let’s go.”

“No,” said McCree, still searching for something in the darkness. “Something’s not right.”

He put his gun back in his holster. Genji opened his mouth, a shocked retort on his tongue, _don’t put away your fucking gun on an op_ , but before he could say anything, McCree shoved him back and said “Run!”

The force of his shove was only enough to make Genji stagger backwards a few steps, but suddenly agents were shouting, McCree was running with one arm outstretched, and Genji flicked his gaze around, looking, trying to make sense, and in a sudden instant things clicked together—

“McCree!” bellowed Reyes, and McCree dove, and Genji ducked under cover, shielding his face with his metal arm—

“ _McCree!”_

The dust cleared, and McCree screamed.

Genji opened his eyes, and saw a man covered in blood.

There was nothing but red in where the arm once was. Genji stared, transfixed at its color and slickness. He could feel his own right arm growing hot enough to burn. McCree kept screaming, his face screwed up in pain, his remaining hand scrabbling uselessly at the lump that was his left arm. His gun had skidded to the side uselessly. The agents on either side of Genji also stared uselessly under their safe position, shielded from the shrapnel.

“Get him to base!” yelled Reyes, and his voice cut through the fog. Genji scrambled to grab McCree under his armpit and lifted him with his metal arm around McCree’s chest. His screams were fewer now, given way to moaning and crying, but they were much weaker. There wasn’t much more time before he would pass out from blood loss.

“Sir!” yelled one of the other agents. “We’ve secured exit route!”

“Good, let’s go!”

Smoke and bullets rained on them as they ran, but somehow, miraculously, the entire team managed to dive into the safety of the craft, and McCree, his eyes glazed over and dizzy with pain, looked up at Genji as the medics set to work suppressing the bleeding.

“Shimada,” he said faintly, between dry lips, and Genji tensed, waiting for something more.

It never came. The gunslinger only sighed, closed his eyes, and Genji might have sworn, once, that he’d seen a smile on McCree’s face, but now he only sank into the seat in the craft and shut his eyes tight, trying to forget.

 

* * *

 

 

McCree was absent for the debrief, but it was just as well. Reyes’s eyes were as haggard as the next agent, and Morrison dismissed them quickly, seeing the tired looks on every member of the team. Genji immediately fell into his bunk and slept until he woke late at night with a thirst aching his dry tongue.

The kitchen was quiet—everyone else was asleep, and didn’t have the erratic relationship with dreams that Genji did. He took a bottle of water from the fridge, drained it, and threw the bottle out.

The clock on the stove told him it was two in the morning. He wondered, in passing, whether Angela— _Dr. Ziegler_ , he corrected himself—might be still working at this hour; after all, she often stayed up working on him when he was still little more than a corpse kept barely alive by machinery. Surely, she might be working as hard for McCree, even if it was only his arm.

He cut a detour around towards the medical wing, unable to help himself, and noted with slight disappointment that the lights were all off in her office. One of the wards was still dimly lit, and he stopped at the sight of McCree lying in a hospital bed, propped up and with bandages all over his—well it could hardly be called an arm anymore, now. Beside him were… metal parts. Displays with drafts and mechanical maps. He stared at them, his heartbeat quickening, a strange familiarity. Before he could move to leave (run away?), McCree turned his head, seeming to sense his presence. They met gazes, and McCree’s eyes hardened, not out of distrust, but a challenge.

“Shimada,” he said. “You gonna lollygag there all day or talk to me?”

Genji frowned, but he stepped in the room and closed the door behind him anyway. He knew when to back down.

McCree turned his eyes back to the ceiling as Genji stood to look at the displays. “Got an interest in robotics?” he asked lazily.

“No.” Genji reached to trace some of the displays with a fingertip. “Just curious as to what they will do to your arm.”

“Can’t be worse than what they did to you,” McCree drawled.

He stopped looking at the display and instead looked somewhat coldly at McCree, who didn’t seem fazed.

“Read your file,” McCree explained with a slight smirk of amusement. “Shimada gang, huh?”

“Family,” said Genji stiffly.

“That’s what they all say,” said McCree. “The gang’s a family, and all that.”

“I didn’t do any of that.”

“Sure, but you were in there, weren’t you?” McCree shifted the blankets in his lap with his single hand, getting more comfortable. “I know what that’s like. Then you get caught and get turned over to the good guys, so they say.”

He thought of his father’s ashes, his hand shaking as he almost dropped the bones between his chopsticks. Would they have burned his body, if he had really seen it through and died?

Genji looked at his hands. One mechanical, one flesh and blood.

“It was a choice for you, too, wasn’t it?” said McCree. “Death, or Blackwatch.”

Flames and ash sounded nice. He wanted a smoke, then, to breathe in what he could of those dead, dried up leaves.

“Starts out as some… damn, fucking self-preservation thing, right?” McCree ran his hand through his hair. “Don’t wanna die, don’t wanna… fucking, rot in a max-security prison for the rest of my life—there’s a whole world to see, y’know! But,” he said, looking at Genji more seriously, “it… becomes more of a, a bigger thing than that, y’know? Fixing the things that you fucked up on by doing good.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

McCree laughed. “Maybe. But it’s better than trying to live day to day on the barest scraps of life.”

Genji stared, incredulous. Only hours earlier, the man was sulking forty thousand feet above the ground over a shitty cigarette.

“It is an entire arm,” he said, still trying to make sense of McCree’s words.

“A whole damn arm,” echoed McCree.

“But for what?”

McCree smiled at him, a casual one that didn’t show teeth.

“Justice,” he said simply.

It was a funny sounding word, justice. Genji mouthed it, trying to get the feel of the hissing sounds between his teeth. “What do you mean?”

McCree shrugged his left shoulder, armless and bandaged. “Thought I’d fucked up enough folks’ arms back in the day. Should get one fucked up in return, too. And see?” he said, jerking his chin at the displays covered in maps and diagrams, “we’re both gonna be part-man, part-machine.”

It was only an arm. Genji looked at his own mechanical arm, wishing with a sour tang that that was all of it.

“You could have died,” he said. He ran a thumb along the grooves on the back of his metal hand.

“Maybe,” said McCree. “But I didn’t and we both lived. Lucky, huh?”

He wasn’t sure if that was what he would’ve called it. He drew his gaze away from his hand to see that McCree was looking at him curiously, in the way that Genji might have looked at a pretty girl once.

It struck him suddenly that the gunslinger, somehow, cared for him, in his own odd American way. Genji looked at McCree’s stump arm and swallowed thickly. Part man, part machine, the pair of them.

“Y’know,” said McCree after a moment, sighing and looking at his stump of a left arm, “what I wouldn’t give right now for a smoke, but I know Angela would have a right fit if I set off any smoke alarms in here.”

Genji shoved his hands into the pockets of his pajamas, thinking, suddenly nervous. “Well,” he said awkwardly, “maybe when you have your—your prosthetic we can share a few cigarettes. Outside.”

McCree grinned. “I’ll hold you to that.”

They held gazes for a heartbeat, and Genji smiled. It wouldn’t be hard to keep the promise.


End file.
